Bloggers unite! Governments ask for advice on future of net

A meeting of the internet's top brass as well as UK politicians, businessmen, and academics will take place in London at 2pm today - and bloggers have been asked to make their voices heard.

Discussion will cover the future of the internet and seek answers to the problems the medium has thrown up, including spam, phishing, freedom of speech, and child pornography. The results will then be fed into a global meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that will be held in Athens at the end of the month, and that meeting's chair, United Nations representative Nitin Desai, will be present and giving a speech alongside trade minister Alun Michael.

Representatives from Google, Nominet, Ofcom, the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), Messagelabs, the Worldbank, the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), Cyber Liberties, and the London Internet Exchange (LINX), among others, will put their point across in a number of panel discussions that mirror what will take place in Athens.

Also present, however, will be an opportunity for bloggers to make their views known through a "chief blogger" (Reg reporter and yours truly) who will trawl the internet looking for comments and occasionally be prompted to read them out to the meeting so those assembled get an understanding of views from the internet user's perspective.

So, if you have something to say or just want to hear what the experts think, view the webcast from 2pm and blog on events, tagging posts "igf" or commenting at the IGF2006.info blog.